Get Data vs Send Data
February 15th, 2007Nowadays Cognos EP system should look like a set of Contributor Applications exchanging data. That's an axiom, refer to Cognos 
Since we have these numerous apps, we need to transfer data between them. And we got 2 variants:
1 Get Data extension -- a very nice feature (especially with system links) allowing us to locally execute data transfer from other Contributor applications to the one we're working in. And, moreover only the current elist is used, which speeds up the process.
2 Send Data via administration links arranged into Contributor Macros. Let's assume that we can allow end-user to start such tasks by pressing hyperlinks (i've described underlying technology earlier in this blog, look for "asp macro calls").
But when to use Get Data and when Send Data? That's what I'd like to talk about.
If you're splitting the model into small functional applications (expenses, profits, debts etc to form P&L, CashFlow, Balance as separate applications) and a single person (regional manager for example) should enter his profit data in profit app, expenses in expenses app and get data into P&L app to form his P&L -- you use Get Data in P&L application to transfer numbers.
And if afterwards another person (planning controller) is responsible for Consolidated Company P&L, each unit P&L should be sent to him, not got by him. Controller cannot press get data time from time to get different results. Neither is easy to monitor submission status in the other app. He just wants to be notified when the submitted unit P&L arrives into his application.
Just to summarize it. If it's one person -- Get Data is preferable and if it's 2 or more people, the one finishing work (submitting) should send his results to others. It just distributed systems "Push not Pull" tactics.
And what do you think about Analyst (Contributor > Contributor) Links in compare with Admin Links?
Analyst (Contrib<>Contrib) or (A>C), (C>A) are SLOW.
Analyst uses only 1 processor, does the some kind of publish, loads data to \temp directory, rereads and then sends it to target.
Admin links are way FASTER, multi threaded, reconcile based they do work up to 10-20 times faster than links using Analyst. And they horizontally scale on cheap hardware.
We use them often (we tend to use Analyst only for some MDM tasks now) and as the result overall system speed is astonishing. Or maybe it’s just for me, remembering Adaytum 2.4 . But getting the company P&L from 10 applications in about 10 minutes is terrific, in my opinion. And using BI as front end for reports is very nice as well — you bypass Contributor size limitations and get all needed dimensions in one report.